Anybody who is a fan of Vai, or just great guitarists in general, should watch the duel between him and Ralph Macchio in the 1986 film Crossroads. (The ending.) Freaking amazing. Vai did the guitar work for both of them in filming.

RolandDeschain wrote:Anybody who is a fan of Vai, or just great guitarists in general, should watch the duel between him and Ralph Macchio in the 1986 film Crossroads. (The ending.) Freaking amazing. Vai did the guitar work for both of them in filming.

Greatest guitar scene ever in a movie by far. We've discussed this before and talked about the weirdness that went on with the music and the supposed disputed credits and such. I originally said I had always heard Ry Cooder played the second part. You said Vai had (and I had heard this same story a year or so after I heard Cooder had played it). In the meantime I was sneaking around and found a really enlightening bit by Arlen Roth (he of "Hot Licks" fame, for those of us who used to buy his videos pre-youtube to learn how to play).

He gives another side of the story entirely. I never knew he was involved. His explanation of that last scene in the write-up here may or may not be true, but it is yet another piece of the mythology that has followed this film that is about the mythology that is the life of Robert Johnson. Check it out if you get a minute.

I don't think anybody knows for sure who did what. There's a lot of debate about it online, and when I last discussed this with Shark, (a year ago? two?) neither of us could find confirmation one way or the other. At a minimum, Vai did his own part, at least. From the best I can tell, Ry taught Macchio during and prior to filming, but if you can find real CONFIRMATION one way or the other, please link it as I'm curious to know.

If you read that whole Arlen Roth thing above, it says that ARLEN actually is the one who taught Macchio as he was with him on the film set and off for 5 MONTHS. They realized that Ralph could make it look like he was playing, but Arlen was recording a lot of the music for the scenes. I think Arlen is saying that a lot of what he played was cut and played over the top with Ry Cooder's music for the film (since Ry wanted a big piece of the credit). Then Arlen got in a fight with the producers over putting Vai in the movie at all. So the producers changed the end entirely to put Vai in (thus dating the movie as Roth claims... I kind of disagree... it was saying that the Devil exists in every generation and has his hooks into whatever is going on... Vai wasn't playing hair metal. He was just gripping it and ripping it).

Then Roth claims that the end guitar scene jumps between, Cooder, Roth, and Vai all playing Macchio's part because they edited it all together. It makes sense when you hear the different sounds that Ralph's guitar is making as he's playing different styles. When he's playing slide it sounds very much like Cooder's playing. When he's playing rock stuff it very well be Roth, and when he is playing the classical I am going to jump out on a limb from what Roth said here and say that that portion is a combination between Roth and Vai. Or they had Vai just re-dub the same stuff Roth played. But there is no way that I think Vai was playing Ralph's part where he's using the bottleneck. Steve is mimicking that sound with his signature style "JACK BUTLER LADiES AND GENTLEMAN, JACK BUTLER!"

So Roth's writing linked above adds another layer entirely to what Roland and I discussed and told what we had always heard over the years about the great head cutting competition. It's interesting reading at least, and I enjoyed hearing Arlen's insights on the movie. It's a 10 minute read for anybody that is interested (and probably half as long as this post!).

Really cool topic, well where it went into the head cutting comp in crossroads.

Acoustic blues is one of my favorite things. There's something very haunting and eerie about it, especially those delta blues. Some of those old son house tunes just give me goosebumps. I love how they captured the feeling of that kind of music in the film. Great stuff.

Concurred. I think the big problem was that the one "name" actor they had was Ralph Macchio. He gave an absolutely outstanding performance. I was shockingly blown away by how well he did in a movie that I thought was going to be silly and sort of a joke when I first popped it in to my laserdisc player (yes seriously). Then the other star was also incredible (Joe Seneca I think was his name), but he was also a secondary character actor. He never was a big lead man. So.... you have this "kid star" who was in Tiger Beat and the like, and he's in a rated r movie about finding Robert Johnson's spirit and exorcising his demons essentially. It is a wonderful film. But who are you going to market that to? Musicians were scoffing at two non musicians starring in it (one the "Karate Kid"). The teeny boppers who were into Macchio couldn't see it without their parents because of the rating. But to me, the casting couldn't have been any more perfect. I believe Jami Gertz (sorry if I spelled it wrong) was on her way to stardom too, so she was also a draw for the teenage boy crowd and the teenage gals who were into idol worship. But again... they don't get into R Rated movies as easily (well, they can... but it typically won't be credited as money toward that film, as they would buy a ticket for a kid flick and sneak in to the other theater, at least that's what we always did).

So basically it wasn't marketable enough. I think if they had given a little and cut out the sex scene or just totally hinted at it and then gotten it certified as PG-13 or PG then it would have had a bit better of a run in theaters. But that's just always been my take. I remember not being terribly interesting, because the marketing was just rotten (I was 13 or 14 when it came out). I was like "Hmmm, I like Macchio ok, but I am not getting what this movie is about... is it a murder mystery?" It came out on laserdisc and my brother tells me Steve Vai is in it and we hurry and get it and loved it. But it's too bad that it hasn't gotten the respect it deserves. Maybe when Macchio is gone people will look back on the "kid star" and watch his stuff again and see that Crossroads was as cool of a movie for musical stuff and good story as Karate Kid was a good rewriting of Rocky and a movie that made every kid want to chopsocky their friends.